On special days, after dawn prayers at the mosque, Ameer, a father of two, returns home to put on makeup from the collection he shares with his wife. Usually, however, he settles for a colourful headscarf of the sort worn by women throughout Nigeria. Ameer also uses the female version of his name, Ameera, preceding [...]
“I want to go to Holland or to England because it’s clean and beautiful there,” said my 11-year-old sister Lidya, who has never traveled outside of Addis Ababa or owned a television. Looking out of the taxi’s window I can see that city streets are not too clean, drivers throw garbage out of the window, [...]
After two days trapped in freezing cold water and breathing from an air bubble in an upturned tugboat under the ocean, Harrison Okene was sure he was going to die. Then a torch light pierced the darkness. Okene (29) is a ship’s cook who was on board the Jascon-4 tugboat when it capsized on May [...]
Ugandans love a good party, every day of the week, till all hours of the morning. We weren’t crowned number 8 in the World’s 10 top drinking nations for our conservative ways. Here in Kampala we tend to embrace a novelty or fad with extreme enthusiasm until we are bored stiff of it. Dance floor [...]
The music scene on the African continent has always been a hive of activity, starting from the early sixties when the likes of Franco reigned supreme. But this activity was always shrouded in terms such as “world music” which tended to lump wide-ranging musical styles into a flat, gray mass of indistinguishable sounds. Over the past [...]
Among the washer women, carpenters, busy waiters and squabbling children sweltering under the midday sun on this dusty Dakar street, an internet revolution is taking place in the world’s first tablet café. Next to the workshops, meat stores and barbershops on what could be any bustling street in sub-Saharan Africa, a grey concrete building stands [...]
Baltimore-based photographer Glenford Nunez‘s latest project was inspired by his assistant Courtney who wears natural hair. He started photographing her with his cellphone and accumulated a small body of work that he then turned into a book of natural hair portraits. Nunez is one of many photographers documenting a growing trend and pride in natural hair. Other [...]
Three of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans discuss the country’s unemployment issues and the controversial topic of male initiation.
The dreams and fears, hopes and histories of five people intersect in this compelling documentary filmed in one day by eight female filmmakers in Johannesburg. It features “garbage” man Vusi Zondo, ambitious property developer JJ Maia, folk musician and hostel dweller Robert Ndima, Beninese migrant and restaurateur Arouna Nassirou and his wife Zenaib, and shopkeeper [...]
Nigeria’s yan daudu face persecution in religious revival
On youth unemployment and circumcision
Learning to be Ethiopian again
Nigerian cook survives two days under sea in shipwreck air bubble
